Of course, there are challenges when applying a pedagogical approach from Finland in Chinese schools. When comparing Chinese education with education in Finland, there are significant differences in terms of cultural and sociological background, education evaluation system as well as classroom size (Tan, 2017).
First of all, the education philosophy is deeply rooted in its cultural and sociological background. China is a developing country with large population and owns world’s largest education system. Current centralized management is the most efficient way for its economic and society development, after all, a democratic and decentralized country like Finland costs more time in decision-making, and strongly relies on high quality human resources. OECD data (2018) showed 45.2% Finnish adults between 25 to 64 years old have received tertiary education while the number is quite small in China. It is worth mentioning that during 1950s to 1980s, governed by president Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, Finland also was in a very centralized management model, which benefited its education reform and welfare system a lot since great wealth was in the hands of central government (Säntti & Salminen, 2015).
Secondly, education evaluation system differs between Finland and China.
In Finland, education is part of its welfare system and it is free of charge to all
Finnish citizens. It serves to every individual according to Finnish education Act (Halinen & Järvinen, 2008). What is more, Finnish education evaluation system is aiming for diagnosing learning and quality assurance rather than distinguishing and labelling students (Finnish Education Evaluation Centre, 2019). Yet, Chinese education system is inequality and selective although some efforts have been made towards popularization of high education over the last two decades (Luo et al., 2018). Some researchers argue that once constructivism approach is implemented in Chinese schools, it will bring challenges to master the content which has been fixed in Chinese textbooks and deviation from examination-oriented assessment system (Tan, 2017).
The third challenge is the gap of classroom size between Finland and China.
In Finland, typically the number of students in a class in comprehensive schools is between 20-25, while the number of classroom size at national level in China is 40- 50 students. Even though Shanghai is better than most other cities in China, it is still much lower than Finnish when it comes to classroom quality (OECD, 2014, for details see Table 5).
Table 5: Comparison of classroom size in Shanghai and Finland’s Comprehensive School
Classroom size Shanghai Finland
For elementary school
In national level, mean of class size is 38.49 (OECD, 2014).
Estimated average class size in Shanghai is 37.09;
At national level, mean of class size is 51.83 (OECD, 2014).
Estimated average class size in Shanghai is 35.02
Mean is 20.25 in low secondary school (OECD, 2014)
*Table data excerpt from Tang (2015)
Nowadays, Finnish teachers have high pedagogy autonomy to teach and they mainly use child-centred approach, whereas most Chinese teachers still follow a teacher-dominated approach and are restricted by national textbooks (Tan, 2012).
It is partly because Finnish classroom contains half number of students compared
to Chinese classroom, in which Finnish teacher more likely take every students’
need into account.
In spite of these differences between the two countries, some similarities are seen as a bridge when learning pedagogical approach from Finland and localizing it in China. Finland implements educational reform every ten years through its national curriculum (Pietarinen et al., 2017) and encourages municipalities develop local level curriculum. China also sees curriculum reforms (课改) as a tool to develop its education system, which also happens approximately each ten years (MoE, 2001; MoE, 2010; Government of P.R.C., 2019).
Especially, the 2001 Chinese national curriculum, it was the first time that the idea of three level curriculum which refers to national level, municipal level and school level has been officially introduced in Chinese educational system (MoE, 2001). Meanwhile, it aimed to transform the role of students from the status of mechanical training, passive learning, rote and memorization to actively participating (主动参与), willingness to explore (乐于探究) and learning by doing (勤于动手) (MoE, 2001). In addition, that curriculum also pointed out the objectives of basic education were to foster students’ four core competences: 1) critical thinking on information, 2) continually learn new knowledge, 3) the ability of analyzing and solving problem, 4) communication and collaboration competence. It was seen that the Chinese Ministry of Education has made efforts towards a constructivist approach, however, the process is particularly long and hard due to factors such as traditional Confucian education, the quality of national education, educational evaluation system and classroom size etc.
Secondly, both countries emphasize teachers’ professionalism. Lavonen (2016) introduced, in Finland, teacher professionalism means a broad of knowledge and skills, e.g. collaboration and networking skills, lifelong learning capabilities and the ability to apply innovative theories and thoughts into practices. These competences could also be seen in some Chinese teachers. For example, in recent years, teachers from leading metropolis Shanghai have been highlighted by the world due to its good performance in TALIS (Lo, 2019) as well
as Shanghai students’ top performance in PISA. While TALIS results shows that 98.5% Shanghai teachers from basic education schools have a bachelor degree or above, and it also reveals high self-efficacy among Shanghai teachers- who are rich in subject knowledge, confident in teaching competence and willing to receive professional development and collaboration with peers (Lo, 2019). In addition, teachers in both countries receive high respect from students and society (Sahlburg, 2011; Friedman, 2013; Lo, 2019).
Another similarity that Finland and China have in common is that both countries are willing to improve and learn from those who do better in education.
Education reform is a sustainable process with the efforts of every generation.
No matter how good the education is today, it has been travelling step-by-step across decades to today. The way Finland learn from Sweden, German and American in the past decades is similar to China learns from Finnish experience and others.